Knight Errant
by 0torno
Summary: Merlyn considers one of his Captains.


The ebb and flow of reality is not an easy thing to direct. The subtle force necessary to avert omniversal chaos requires perfect execution, and minor slips can be cataclysmic; in a world where the simplest being can have a crucial role to play, the fates of the cosmos cannot be trusted to chance. Merlyn has not been idle in his exile.

The last several years in the shadows have allowed him to balance and play pieces unobtrusively, his movements unknown to enemies and well-meaning meddlers alike, and this has given him an edge; an advantage he intends to press. He has worked silently and mostly alone in the twilight for millennia to direct the grand play that unfolds in the slow electric cello of the infinite stars and the bumbling lives of their puny inhabitants, creatures too dull to know the part they serve in the multiversal game. The board is only evident those who are capable of stepping back far enough to see it - and few are. It is a game of rather large scale, after all. A rare perspective is needed to stay a move ahead.

Merlyn has never been reactive. He is the player, the catalyst, the maker and destroyer, the one who makes things happen. The omniverse is his board, its people his chess pieces and warriors, to manipulate and sacrifice at will. It is not always pleasant to control the lives of sentient beings, pulling them along like puppets on strings - sometimes a strange sensation rises in his stomach - but the desired outcome must be reached at all costs. The Void lies all around, and only his interventions keep the omniverse from tipping into nothingness.

A long-laid plan is about to come to fruition. The _boy_ would have his part to play, of course; that was what he was made for and it always seemed he became involved - the boy he created and molded with training and trial and the subtle machinations of personal grief, the boy whose life was a fiction engineered to produce the hero he would need, the boy he's almost sorry he hurt -

No. Not 'the boy'. Braddock. A grown man, now. The man he brought from the clutches of death more times than he would like to count, the man whose life had been twisted beyond recall to serve the grand scheme of a master manipulator, the man whose strong mind and broad shoulders were beginning to crack from the stress and the sheer pain of a life that was never meant for _him_, though it was _meant_ for him - and Merlyn could almost be sorry -

No - _Captain Britain_. A playing piece. Nothing more.

The revelation of his involvement, once the crisis has passed, will not be pleasant. Some pieces do not always move as the player intends, and the boy – Braddock - is one of these. An obtuse, rigid individual too arrogant to accept his servile role in the scheme of things, far too attached to the delicate free will he thinks he has (but is that not how you made him?).

He sees the boy's - Braddock's - _Captain Britain's_ - face; the flash of disbelief, then shock, then betrayal - settling, of course, into the righteous rage he so loves to express, a knee-jerk reaction he has developed to cope with the madness of the greater world he was never supposed to encounter (but, that was _why he was conceived_. It _couldn't_ be wrong, could it?) His anger would be easy to bear - but the first fleeting pain in those eyes would be able to tear the heart from a lesser being. Lesser; Merlyn's heart is guarded by calculation and gilded by steel. And the boy - _Captain Britain_, damn it! - nothing more than a single cell in a single face of a multifaceted gem more intricate than his simple mind could ever hope to perceive, let alone understand. He would play his little part well, in the end, as he always had, tripping along and punching things and contributing every now and then to a mild success. Braddock would fulfill his meager roll admirably. A good little pawn, in the end, he would serve his purpose. His opinions on the matter were irrelevant.

Merlyn is nothing if not resourceful. He will direct his pawns as he has always done, and the omniverse will endure.

The good Captain would cope, as he always had.

And the pain in his eyes couldn't hurt Merlyn.


End file.
